Dempsey sets agenda for RDI lecture

Mike Dempsey will suggest that designers must take steps to ensure they are not complicit in the ‘premature sexualising of children’ when he delivers his inaugural lecture as Master of the Faculty of Royal Designers for Industry tomorrow evening.

Addressing an audience at the Royal Society of Arts under the heading ‘From cave man to spray can – a graphic journey’, the CDT Design founder and graphic designer will urge the industry to ‘take stock and think more carefully’ about how the power of graphic design can be used for good or ill.

Design’s role in the ‘grooming’ of young children to become members of an adult, consumer world, prematurely, is one of a number of personal issues that Dempsey will discuss in his address. Food labelling, alcohol packaging and the social responsibility of design will also feature in the speech.